I find the article a little ridiculous. “Chilling” is being used to describe the end of late night television for commercial reasons. People aren’t watching late night TV as much, and the advertising is not there - that isn’t chilling; that’s the world we live in.
The way the article is written you’d think late night TV is an irreplaceable cultural touchstone. It’s nonsense - people have stopped watching so it’s already no longer a touchstone.
This is from Wikipedia on rival Tonight Shows ratings in 2006:
2006, The Tonight Show led in ratings for the 11th consecutive season, with a nightly average of 5.7 million viewers – 31% of the total audience in that time slot – compared to 4.2 million viewers for Late Show with David Letterman, 3.4 million for Nightline and 1.6 million for Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
In 2025, Colbert is leading the ratings with 2.42m - less than half the audience for 1st place in 2006 - and now we’re in a time where TV advertising has declined massively in value.
Look at the TV ratings for 2024/2025 and network TV has collapsed. The most watched shows are Netflix. And even the few Network TV shows that break the top 20 are getting way fewer viewers than 20 years ago. Plus they’re skewed to older viewers that are not valuable to the advertisers. The demographic they want - 18-35 - don’t watch TV any more, and they certainly don’t sit down every night to watch late night TV shows.
So Colbert’s Late Show being cancelled is more a sign of the times. Network TV is dying and it’s dying fast. The merger itself between Skydance and Paramount/CBS is itself a sign of the times - one billionaire media family is exiting old media (the Redstone family) which another is buying into it (the Ellis family). But Paramount and CBS are not doing well - Paramount global has declining revenues, declining assets and made an operating loss of $5.3bn. The big media conglomerates failed to move fast enough with the times; Netflix has won the streaming wars while traditional TV and Cinema is in massive decline. These companies don’t have any answers - they’re just managing declines while new companies will come along and take advantage of the new world.
Colbert’s show was in 1st place and it was cancelled to save money. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are further cancellations although for now I suspect the networks will wait to see where the audience of the Late Show lands. But one of the shows (Jimmy Kimmel’s I think?) house band was sacked last year to save money - the writing is on the wall.
It’s possible the politics of the merger played a role but even if that’s the case, it shows that the value of the Late Show has declined so much for Paramount/CBS that they could dump it easily.
Colbert is still the most lucrative thing in that timeslot. they were STILL making money. They have nothing else to put in that slot that will get them anything even close to that.
this. this right here. “it doesn’t make as much as it used to” doesn’t mean “we can easily make more with something else entirely”
the only network in the proper position to take a gamble like that and legitimately have a reason to believe them is fox who is consistently in the 4 spot for that market.
cbs is the network with the golden goose right now. it’s still laying eggs, just less often than it used to. but they want to appease the fascist overlord so they can benefit from some government corruption. don’t let the numbers or the statisticians spin this. pay attention to what’s being said on the streets. in this case the numbers and the statisticians belong to the conservatives, but the streets are too smart to follow along.
If Colbert is leading in the ratings, it doesn’t matter how much higher the Tonight Show’s viewer numbers were 20 years ago. An overall decline in viewership doesn’t motivate a network to cancel its top rated show to save money. That show is making more money than its other shows. Dismissing this as just the workings of a dying industry doesn’t make sense.
I dont disagree that late night TV is in decline, but do you just accept that it’s a total coincidence this happens when CBS wants to suck up to Trump?
Except that talk shows are among the cheaper shows to make. You don’t have to pay for as much talent, writing costs are lower, and production is generally cheaper. It is the reason why a lot of day time television converted from soap operas to talk shows. Hell, a lot of modern podcasts have the format of a talk show.
That the show was just cancelled without any attempt at negotiation sounds fishy.
I find the article a little ridiculous. “Chilling” is being used to describe the end of late night television for commercial reasons. People aren’t watching late night TV as much, and the advertising is not there - that isn’t chilling; that’s the world we live in.
The way the article is written you’d think late night TV is an irreplaceable cultural touchstone. It’s nonsense - people have stopped watching so it’s already no longer a touchstone.
This is from Wikipedia on rival Tonight Shows ratings in 2006:
In 2025, Colbert is leading the ratings with 2.42m - less than half the audience for 1st place in 2006 - and now we’re in a time where TV advertising has declined massively in value.
Look at the TV ratings for 2024/2025 and network TV has collapsed. The most watched shows are Netflix. And even the few Network TV shows that break the top 20 are getting way fewer viewers than 20 years ago. Plus they’re skewed to older viewers that are not valuable to the advertisers. The demographic they want - 18-35 - don’t watch TV any more, and they certainly don’t sit down every night to watch late night TV shows.
So Colbert’s Late Show being cancelled is more a sign of the times. Network TV is dying and it’s dying fast. The merger itself between Skydance and Paramount/CBS is itself a sign of the times - one billionaire media family is exiting old media (the Redstone family) which another is buying into it (the Ellis family). But Paramount and CBS are not doing well - Paramount global has declining revenues, declining assets and made an operating loss of $5.3bn. The big media conglomerates failed to move fast enough with the times; Netflix has won the streaming wars while traditional TV and Cinema is in massive decline. These companies don’t have any answers - they’re just managing declines while new companies will come along and take advantage of the new world.
Colbert’s show was in 1st place and it was cancelled to save money. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are further cancellations although for now I suspect the networks will wait to see where the audience of the Late Show lands. But one of the shows (Jimmy Kimmel’s I think?) house band was sacked last year to save money - the writing is on the wall.
It’s possible the politics of the merger played a role but even if that’s the case, it shows that the value of the Late Show has declined so much for Paramount/CBS that they could dump it easily.
Colbert is still the most lucrative thing in that timeslot. they were STILL making money. They have nothing else to put in that slot that will get them anything even close to that.
this. this right here. “it doesn’t make as much as it used to” doesn’t mean “we can easily make more with something else entirely”
the only network in the proper position to take a gamble like that and legitimately have a reason to believe them is fox who is consistently in the 4 spot for that market.
cbs is the network with the golden goose right now. it’s still laying eggs, just less often than it used to. but they want to appease the fascist overlord so they can benefit from some government corruption. don’t let the numbers or the statisticians spin this. pay attention to what’s being said on the streets. in this case the numbers and the statisticians belong to the conservatives, but the streets are too smart to follow along.
If Colbert is leading in the ratings, it doesn’t matter how much higher the Tonight Show’s viewer numbers were 20 years ago. An overall decline in viewership doesn’t motivate a network to cancel its top rated show to save money. That show is making more money than its other shows. Dismissing this as just the workings of a dying industry doesn’t make sense.
I dont disagree that late night TV is in decline, but do you just accept that it’s a total coincidence this happens when CBS wants to suck up to Trump?
Except that talk shows are among the cheaper shows to make. You don’t have to pay for as much talent, writing costs are lower, and production is generally cheaper. It is the reason why a lot of day time television converted from soap operas to talk shows. Hell, a lot of modern podcasts have the format of a talk show.
That the show was just cancelled without any attempt at negotiation sounds fishy.
STFU, dimwit.